1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a magnetic head assembly. More particularly, the invention relates to a magnetic head assembly which is used for a magnetic disk drive, and is made up of a slider having a magnetic head for reading data from, and writing data onto, a magnetic disk, the slider being mounted on a gimbal spring with an adhesive agent.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, magnetic disk drives have been realized in ever smaller sizes and in ever lighter weights having both decreased volume and decreased height. In order to place many disks and heads in such a compact device, attempts have been made to reduce the gap among the disks and to fabricate a magnetic head-support mechanism in a small size and in a reduced thickness. Therefore, a slider for mounting the magnetic head has a decreased size in outer diameter and a decreased thickness. At present, the slider has a length, width and thickness which are all nearly halved and has a volume which is about one-eighth compared with that of sliders of ten years ago.
Even in a small and light magnetic disk drive, it has been demanded to increase the recording density of the disk accompanying an increase in the amount of data to be stored. This fact requires the gap to be narrowed between the slider mounting the magnetic head and the slider. Therefore, it has been desired to provide a slider having stabilized flying performance and, hence, to provide a slider having a more accurate shape that is little deformed by a change in the ambient temperature.
In a conventional magnetic disk drive, a magnetic disk having a diameter of, for example, 3.5 inches and a head-positioning actuator are incorporated in an enclosure. The actuator is provided with a swinging arm, and a magnetic head assembly is mounted on the tip of the arm. The magnetic head assembly is constituted by a load beam made of a stainless steel, a slider incorporating a magnetic head, and a gimbal spring interposed between the slider and the load beam.
The gimbal spring may often be provided in a tip portion of the load beam integrally therewith. In such a case, the gimbal spring is integrally formed in the load beam being partitioned by two opposing U-shaped holes formed in the tip portion of the load beam. That is, the gimbal spring is supported by the load beam via a pair of beam portions formed between the opposing ends of U-shaped holes.
The slider is mounted on the gimbal spring using an adhesive agent. By using a dispenser, the adhesive agent is dropwisely applied to the gimbal spring and, then, the slider is mounted being forced into contact with the adhesive agent.
As the slider is realized in a small size to safisfy the tendency toward decreasing the size and weight of the magnetic disk drive and increasing the reliability, however, the adhesion area becomes very small between the slider and the gimbal spring. This makes it difficult to accurately control the amount of the adhesive agent applied by using the dispenser. If the amount of the adhesive agent happens to become large, therefore, the adhesive agent applied to the adhesion surface of the gimbal spring spreads between the gimbal spring and the adhesion surface of the slider when the slider is adhered thereto with a pushing force. As a result, the slider is adhered to the gimbal spring over an increased area and is deformed, when the adhesive agent is hardened.